


dreamers often lie; dreamers often die

by roseredwritings



Category: As You Like It - Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, so many more works of shakespeare...so many eventually if i write more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:14:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseredwritings/pseuds/roseredwritings
Summary: Utilising the plots of the works of William Shakespeare to expand upon and retell Romeo and Juliet. Blending the characters and stories of other works of Shakespeare into the characters of Romeo and Juliet and the story told by the play, this fiction recreates elements of Shakespeare in a hopefully humorous and hopefully tragic light. I cannot promise to write the characters close to their (Or the characters they are intermixed with) personalities, but with any luck, it will be an enjoyable journey all the same.
Relationships: Juliet Capulet/Romeo Montague, Mercutio/Benvolio Montague, and just more you know we'll see
Kudos: 2





	dreamers often lie; dreamers often die

FOR ALL THEIR SUPPOSED fragrance, their scent seemed ashen. He inhaled it like a fog clogging up his every orifice, bleeding through his eyes, clouding his ears with a lost melancholy, stifling his breath and stopping up his breathing. It felt an echo-chamber of darkness that haunted his every move, ghosts jostling to have their joke with him. Part of him felt like laughing despite the empty yearning loss that stung throughout his body. A hollow crown was his heart, and yet he knew it had more of a purpose than that; if he  had a love, he would fight the last soldier remaining, he would fight for his love. Though he had always preferred that sentiment in the metaphorical sense. If they said make love, not war, he would latch onto the love and never let go. War was for brawlers, for his kin. He had always felt a separation in that respect. 

An infinity of nothing and everything bruised at him, and he kept his walk down the aisle. As if he were about to be wed, but instinctively he knew it to be no wedding march. No guests smiled at him, no mother wept, though he knew his own would, she always felt emotions deeply to the core, and there was no girl in white waiting beautiful for him at the end. Well, there were some slivers of white shimmering out, he acknowledged, despite the haze that made everything seem so dark and foul. Blurring closer, he tried to concentrate his breaths, stepping nearer and nearer, trying to not stumble. Until he reached what felt his final destination. He crumbled down, knees hit the floor, he kneeled revenant by the body of a girl in white, his eyes dawning gossamer in tears that softly crouched by his eyes, patting his cheeks with a dreadfulness he could not comprehend. He had never seen her before, though he felt he had perhaps seen her picture, but it was not that he thought of when he started to rise, his hands tender as they grasped around her hands. It was not a vagueness of a photo that made him feel so - it was her everything lying there, that made him feel like a dam, like he felt wounded at the injustice of her lying there so still, so seemingly dead. He had never met the girl, and yet he knew her, like she was a star adjoined to him, joined through the cosmos that drew them together and thrust them apart. Thoughts had not been clear to him since he entered the cavernous darkness, and he could not grasp onto thoughts with any clarity, but a smile from her seemed to play on a loop. A smile he had never seen before; he only saw her corpse. Jarringly they mocked against him. Allowing the shivers already arising in his body to wash over them, the tears continued to fall, and he started to weep. Weeping for the dead, a common act, weeping for the strangeness of the girl in white, only for him to let out a scream. A desperation of one as he dropped down again, allowing his head to fall against her chest, breathing faster and faster, raging and-

Waking. Romeo arose, shivering and cold, grieving for a girl he knew not. When Mercutio spoke of dreamers, he had never seen the depth that went through his mind in the fitful hours of sleep he tried to snatch onto. His heart lived with a longing and an untranslatable emotion that seeped often into dreams. Vivid, and often feeling real, though he swore that nothing could be truthful about the one dreamt just that night. It couldn’t. He bathed in tragedy with his words on a regular basis, but some felt too real for him to actually consider wanting. Smoothing away his hair, he tried to not dwell on the dreams, but the simple fact was that by still resting in his bed, he was too alone in the place the dream had happened to breathe properly. Tired of it all, he tried to rise, going through the motions, though contemplating the night all the same. He knew the one place he would find comfort would be the sanded, desolate, pool-table and fairground central of the beaches. The coolness of the water would ease his burning heart and head. And maybe if he thought of her, Rosaline, the girl from the day before, he would feel better. Yeah. If he kept focusing on her, he would forget the girl from his dreams. What was a dream to flesh and bone, to fiery beauty? 

If he kept on telling himself he loved her, he’d forget the fearful love his heart felt in the dreams of darkness. 

Laughter. Furious, pained, and disbelieving laughter. His feet muffling against the sand that came to rest at the beaches of Verona Beach, Mercutio scuffed there as that strange sound batted from his lips. It was not till a while later till he allowed himself to fall down amongst that sand, sitting darkly contemplative as his eyes misted towards the sea. He hated those moments, the ones he named lost ones, that so often came when he spoke, but looking forward into the distance, it swam across him again. It hardly helped that- well, that was the root of all his frustration at the moment. Dead. Father dead. Those words bled against him and filled him with a dying grief once more, but it was their consequences that brought the brunt of the pain. Grief, he had been told to deal with; death, he had tried to understand. Despite a casual demeanour, there was always a steel to the actions and voice of Mercutio that both frightened and enticed those in his presence. No, the death of his father had wounded him, but the plague to finish him was his brother. Paris. Paris had always been considered more of a toast to society, the more charming delight, but Mercutio would be damned if he did not understand that there was something much harsher beneath that glistening skin of his brother. Oh yes, Paris was handsome, and he was wealthy, and he seemed to lick the boots of the Capulet family in hopes of an allegiance through their daughter, but he was cruel. Greed-driven. He went through the public motions of charm but Mercutio knew of his true self- at times, he hoped that it was only shown to him, and that he truly was a kinder person like most of Verona seemed to consider him, but after...after the recent events. After all that had just happened. He could not. 

‘How’s it you’re not the first I’ve found moping on these shores?’ 

Mercutio tightened his shoulders at the prick of a voice. They soon relaxed upon realising the owner of that ever-beautiful voice, but the initial instinct was there all the same. 

‘Benvolio’ He softened. ‘Would I speak false to accuse the other of being your dearest kinsmen, our forlorn Romeo?’

‘You know him of old. Lovelorn, as per the usual. You look somewhat forlorn yourself, however.’.

‘Ah. You’ve caught me out. It’s Paris.’.

‘What’s he done now? Not trying to ship you away to some countryside area again, is he? You know I’ll never let you leave my side’.

‘I thought you did but keep the peace?’.

‘I keep the peace and I keep my love. I’ll not fight him, perhaps, but I won’t let him’.

‘You’re too good to me. But no. He’s done with being content with those threats of some impoverished country cottage existence. Now he’s-’

‘Go on, Mercutio. You can tell me.’

‘My inheritance. He’s refusing me my inheritance’.

‘The one promised by your father? Is he within the rights of the law? Won’t you be able to broach this with- with Escalus. Prince isn’t a light word after all, and he’s your cousin’.

‘I don’t know at this point. May be worth a try. But for now, I’ve nowhere to go. No inheritance to live on’.

‘No. No. You’ll always a home with me. And with Romeo. Or there’s always that strange Arden they speak on’, 

‘Would your family want me?’, 

‘If they don’t, I’ll move with you to the camps of Arden myself’.

‘Where the lost souls go. Where freedom is found’.

‘Isn’t there just a beauty in that thought? A place crafted for harmony’.

‘I do wonder if it’d be my speed - might be his speed, though’ Mercutio shrugged in the direction of an arriving male. 

‘Romeo might be a bit bloody poetic, or so he tries to be. But you know the speed he exists in .The passion of his heart never slows’.

‘Did I perhaps hear mention of a heart? My own bruises and bleeds with a constancy.’ Romeo Montague uttered with a drawn-out flicker of a sigh. 

Shaking his head, Mercutio bore a smile, trying to forget his own woes as he found himself caught up in the foolishness of a man who had never yet, in actual fact, known love, or the sparking of it, kindling a heart with tender rashness. 

‘You may have. Who is it now you long for?’ Mercutio teased. 

‘Long for? No! I burn, I pine- I- I perish for her! She’s beautiful. But she doesn’t want me. And it’s a tragedy, you know? Another one to chalk up to my board of woes’.

‘And when did you meet her?’ Benvolio queried. 

‘Yesterday. It was mesmerising. I met her at a wrestling match hosted in the grounds of where her father lives. She kept using the excuse of ‘needing to speak to her cousin’, 

‘Right. So you met a girl yesterday. At a wrestling match. And this wouldn’t happen to be the only remarked upon one held yesterday, would it now?’. Benvolio stated. 

‘...Perhaps’.

‘The one hosted by a Capulet, no less?’.

‘...Maybe so’.

‘Is her name Rosaline, and is she the daughter of a Capulet?’.

‘You’re quite remarkable with your guessing games, Benvolio’ Romeo let his lip quiver. 

‘D’you want a chance to meet her again?’ Mercutio intruded into the conversation once more, wavering a thick piece of embossed card from his pocket. 

‘Is that what I believe it to be? You never!’ Delighted, the lips of Romeo arose into a grin, vision fixed. 

‘An invite to the Capulet ball, held by the uncle of your Rosaline? I believe it to be.’ Chuckling, Mercutio passed it across. 

Coughing, Benvolio whispered to Mercutio. ‘All things considered, how on earth do you have an invitation to tonight?’.

‘Well, I received it far before the cruel actions of my brother. And besides, either way, they still count me as my father’s son and a friend by extent of that’.

‘That’s one reassurance. But do you wish to come across Paris there?’.

‘Trust me, he’ll be too wrapped up in trying to speak with the cousin of Rosalind, Juliet. And I believe I’m well in my right to use my connections for one last night of revelry’. Speaking louder than the whisper he had just used to match Benvolio, Mercutio spoke louder to garner the attention of Romeo. ‘I think thrusting our Montague into the path of a Capulet will be most enjoyable’.

‘I’m so grateful, truly. I think this might be it. Though, I must confess, last night gave me pause. I saw a girl in my dreams.’

Frowning, Mercutio looked at him. ‘I think the correct phrasing is that you saw the girl of your dreams, not in them’.

‘No, Mercutio, listen. I saw this girl, in my dreams, and I think she was dead. It had me so scared. She seemed to touch the innermost crevices of my heart’.

‘You’re a dreamer, Romeo, and nothing more. Don’t tell me, Queen Mab has been with you?’.

‘Don’t tease me so. I tell you, it frightened me like I’ve never felt before. I feel cold just in remembrance’. 

‘All the more reason for tonight. Indulge, my darling, and have a drink’.

‘Oh my. Tonight is going to be quite interesting, I’m foreseeing.’ Benvolio groaned. ‘I’m actually quite anticipating it.’. 

JUST ACROSS THE CITY of Verona Beach, a girl arose in flustering breaths, breathing heavy, and it was not just the frantic party preparation throughout Capulet Mansion that left her deadly in thoughts as she clutched a hand against her sheets...


End file.
